


The Fear of (Not) Being Seen

by bold_seer



Category: Collateral (2004)
Genre: Gen, Late at Night, Loneliness, Los Angeles, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24927601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: At the beginning of Michael Mann’sCollateral(2004), there’s Vincent, incognito in sunglasses and a grey suit.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5
Collections: Unconventional Fanwork Exchange 2020





	The Fear of (Not) Being Seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/gifts).



**NOBODY NOTICES**

At the beginning of Michael Mann’s _Collateral_ (2004), there’s Vincent, incognito in sunglasses and a grey suit. Alone, surrounded by others, in an airport terminal. Lots of people. He bumps into Jason Statham, in a cameo, swapping briefcases with him. Nobody pays them any attention.

People and cars and music. In a different location, Max starts his day – or evening – glancing at a picture of Maldives Island. His escape from real life: _Things get heavy for me, I take five minutes out, and I just go there._ An island, away from everything (and everyone).

 _People in the wrong place at the wrong time_ is one of the recurring elements of the film. Max, who almost misses Vincent in a moment’s absent-mindedness, which could’ve been lucky, but maybe not, will end up driving around a hitman who A.) attaches himself to Max, B.) threatens him, and C.) tries to kill him. Fanning, Mark Ruffalo’s detective who trails Vincent (and Max), is shot because – like Vincent, like Max – he’s doing _his_ job. The only fortunate meeting, stars aligned, business card and postcard exchanged, seems to occur between Annie and Max. In the present, Vincent walks out, looking for a cab. And so, the night begins.

This is a film that is about night-time L.A. as much as it’s set there.* One main character lives here. The other – our antagonist – is newly arrived, and he doesn’t like the city. In one of his first lines of dialogue he states:

**_VINCENT:_** _[W]henever I’m here, I can’t wait to leave. Too sprawled out, disconnected. (…) Seventeen million people. If this was a country, it’d be the fifth biggest economy in the world, and nobody knows each other. (...) Nobody notices._

This sets up a conflict between not only Vincent and the place he dislikes, but between Vincent and Max. Despite dreaming of being elsewhere, L.A. is Max’s home, what he’s used to. The conversation continues. Bach’s _Air_ still plays in the background, as Vincent tells us and Max an anecdote: a man who died on the MTA wasn’t discovered until hours after his death. 

It’s not a very nice thought, riding next to a dead body. (It’s not a very nice thought, being in the same _cab_ as someone who’s acquired a _body count_. Not to mention, driving a cab with an actual body in the trunk...) Or the other way around. Not decent. It’s not the kind of respect people deserve in death. But Vincent, who calls Max’s reaction to a dead body a _hissy fit_ , isn’t a character who cares about decent. Is he?

Vincent is of course played by Tom Cruise, who, the story goes, looked so anonymous while he prepared for the part that people didn’t notice that hey, that’s Tom Cruise, one of the biggest stars on the planet.

Later in the film, Vincent tells Max that he won’t personally deal with Felix, the drug lord connected to the people who have hired his services. He won’t risk his anonymity, instead sending Max to meet Felix. A scene in which Max literally becomes Vincent – an echo of an earlier part of the film, where Max, having realised the danger he’s in, tries to get Vincent to drive off in his cab. Taxi drivers are, after all, anonymous.

Vincent himself seems to have executed his ‘drive around, collect bodies’ scheme before, pinning the blame for his hits on another cab driver. Or someone like Vincent did that, someone anonymous, someone like Jason Statham – a ghost, who disappeared:

  
_**DET. FANNING:** Remember that Bay Area deal? (...) Cabbie drove around all night, killed three people (…) Anyway, that detective always thought there was someone else in that cab._

This character expresses disappointment about somebody not being noticed.

**

**I LIKE TO THINK OF MYSELF AS HIS FRIEND**

Before Max poses as Vincent, they visit Max’s hospitalised mother, together – because it’s routine, and breaking routine attracts attention. Max is naturally reluctant to take Vincent there, not only for the obvious reason. Mrs Durocher – Ida – simultaneously undermines and brags about her son, talking about him as if he isn’t there. Which Max then complains about, and Vincent repeats to Ida, in an odd triangle. 

Here the real and imaginary connection between Max and Vincent blurs. Vincent is a client, but in this make-believe version he moreover becomes a friend. This recalls an earlier scene, in which Vincent passionately defends Max’s rights over the phone, talking to the latter’s boss, though he is using a(nother) false identity and has his own motives, wanting the night to resume by any means. 

Vincent insists on meeting Max’s mother, even though Max refuses. He likewise insists on getting her flowers – _People buy flowers. Buy flowers,_ he repeats – an imitation of normal life, routines, so unlike the jazz improvisations he otherwise appears to admire. Meeting Ida, he’s almost awkward, distant and uncomfortable at first, before turning on his polite charm. Ida and Vincent get along well: _Visit again? (…) When you come back._ He even gives her his name. 

_**IDA:** Max never had many friends. Always talking to himself in the mirror..._

Hints of _Taxi Driver_ (1976)? Or a hint that Vincent and Max mirror each other. This visit is a kind of mirror, reversal, the opposite of what it looks to be on the surface. At the same time, it’s a mirror that shows the truth, or unmasks it as a lie.

Max isn’t as successful as his mother wrongly assumes, has been told, has told herself, as the audience and Vincent already know. _She hears what she wants to hear_ , he explains. _I don’t disillusion her_. Max doesn’t want to tell her the truth: that the limo business is an unfulfilled dream. But Vincent isn’t the friendly, sophisticated businessman he masquerades as either, or the _cool guy_ he could easily be mistaken for.

Despite the charade, there’s something appealing about a game of pretend that both temporarily hides and unexpectedly reveals truths, some of them painful. Vincent says, about parents, _They project onto you their flaws. What they don’t like about themselves, their lives, whatever_ – mirror expectations. Vincent and Max share some experiences in this area. But in the hospital scene, a part of Vincent also enjoys the normalcy. The knowledge that Max, too, is as adrift as he is. Even though he is rooted in this place, this city.

**

**CITY ANIMALS**

There’s one part of the film that people always like to recall. _TV Tropes_ once called it _What Do You Mean It’s Not Symbolic?: The infamous coyote scene_ , suggesting it’s a symbol without meaning. The coyotes appear to have been a stroke of luck, something that happened while shooting, then was so right, it became a crucial, memorable scene. The current version of the page, July 2020, refers to the _Rule Of Symbolism: The infamous coyote scene, possibly hinting at the fundamental differences between Vincent and Max_ , emphasising that one of them is a killer, while the other stops his car to let animals cross the road. This isn’t an uninteresting point. Yet there are things about the scene that seem much more important to me than something we already know.

For an instant, Vincent is confused why they’re stopping. But after that brief moment, Vincent isn’t perplexed by Max’s behaviour as much as he’s affected by the experience. He looks shaken, even moved. The camera lingers on his big, melancholy eyes, in a way that makes the name _Vincent_ strikingly appropriate for the character. Is something sinking in, or rising from under the surface? Their conversation encapsulated by _Life’s short._ Max likely has few connections, but Vincent lacks any meaningful contacts.

Many have picked up on the parallel between Vincent and the coyotes, hunters in a territory that is both foreign and familiar. Vincent is an intruder, a threat, but all animals who wander in a city are a bit lost. There’s a strong visual parallel between them: the sharp, grey, hungry look, as well as that sad, lost loneliness. This is a moment shared by two people, who are both lone wolves. As strange as it sounds, they _have_ connected, Vincent giving information about his past, Max verbalising his dream of Island Limos - again, significant name - which he was initially reluctant to talk about with Vincent.

It’s a brief pause. Max’s exhaustion is palpable. Vincent, too, has let his guard down. It’s a moment you can’t quite describe with words, because that would take something away from it, from the wordless, shared experience.

Right now, right here, they’re in this cab together.

*To the extent that _Los Angeles Times_ writers and editors voted it one of the best films set in L.A. in the past 25 years, for a list where each film _had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience_. On _Collateral_ , they write: _[Mann] transforms Los Angeles into a beautiful and otherworldly place, (...) which includes both the sophisticated and the rustic (...) as a sphinx-like coyote crossing the street._


End file.
